As 5 stay silent, defense rests in Ft. Dix terror trial

Attorneys for the five Muslim immigrants accused of plotting to attack Fort Dix rested their case yesterday, ending testimony in the state's most significant terrorism prosecution since 2001.

U.S. District Judge Robert Kugler told jurors to return to the Camden courtroom this afternoon, when he will explain the relevant law to them.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys will begin presenting their closing arguments Monday. The jurors -- seven women and five men whose names have been sealed from the public -- are expected to start sequestered deliberations the next day.

The defense rested after calling just two expert witnesses and without testimony from the defendants, foreign-born men who met in the Cherry Hill area and are accused of conspiring to launch a jihad against a military or government site.

Prosecutors say Mohamad Shnewer, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Jordan, spoke openly of attacking a military base and took surveillance trips with an FBI informant to Fort Dix and Dover Air Force Base. They say he watched al Qaeda propaganda videos and trained at a firearms range with his co-defendants, ethnic Albanian brothers Eljvir, Shain and Dritan Duka, during a trip to the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania.

A fifth defendant, Serdar Tatar, a permanent legal resident from Turkey, is accused of giving the informant a map the Fort Dix cantonment area, which he took from his father's pizzeria, which delivered food inside Fort Dix.

Defense attorneys have denied there was any plot, arguing that two FBI informants concocted and encouraged the conspiracy because they were being paid and promised legal immigration status.

On the last day of testimony, Troy Archie, the attorney for Eljvir Duka, called two computer experts to counter prosecutors' contentions that his client searched the internet in September 2006 to find a map of Fort Dix. Archie said the youngest Duka brother was actually searching for an auto body store and the maps stored on his computer automatically included the base.

Thomas Smith, an information technology professor at Drexel University in Philadelphia, told jurors that internet mapping programs typically store a wider swath of maps than what users might see on their computer screens, so nearby locations are easily accessible if the user decides to navigate in any direction.

"It's theoretically possible that there are map tiles (downloaded) that the user doesn't know he has," Smith said.

Deputy U.S. Attorney William Fitzpatrick recalled to the stand an FBI computer expert who disagreed with Smith's conclusions. And he showed jurors that six map images captured by Duka's computer appear to be centered in or around Fort Dix, not the body shop 13 miles away.

John P. Martin may be reached at jmartin@starledger.com or (609) 989-0379.